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Lammas School headteacher Shona Ramsay said the programme was a good idea.

"It's a preventative measure to deter our young people from carrying knives," she said.

"We don't have a problem here and I want to keep it that way. We're really pressing home the message that schools are safe."

From today, the arches will be used about once a term in each of the borough's 22 secondary schools.

Inspector Mike Hamer, head of the borough's safer schools programme, said around 12,000 pupils had been screened so far and no weapons had been found.

He said: "We think that's a success. What it means is that there has been no knives in schools and the students should feel safe."

He said there had been an "overwhelmingly positive" response and denied that the arches would criminalise all young people.

He added that the arches were a "response to what young people want" and helped reduce the fear of crime in schools.

Marco Santo, 12, said he was "a bit nervous before walking through the arches" but that it "wasn't that bad".

Mischa Haynes, also 12, said: "It makes you feel safe in school and it's a place where you should feel safe."

The Government launched its Tackling Knives Action Programme last summer which targeted 10 knife-crime hotspots with searches, knife arches and increases in police patrols.

At the time, Frances Lawrence, widow of headteacher Philip Lawrence who was stabbed outside St George's School in Maida Vale, north London, in 1995, called for more action to prevent stabbings but said knife arches amounted to "criminalisation of all young people".